Newly-released court documents show Quincy District Court Judge Mark Coven questioned former Braintree Police Chief John Polio about his claim that he played no role in Amy Bishop’s release after she fatally shot her teenage brother in 1986.

Amy Bishop was sentenced to life in prison without parole Monday after being convicted of going on a shooting rampage during a faculty meeting at an Alabama university, killing three colleagues and wounding three others in 2010.

Facing the death penalty and a prosecution with clear-cut case facts, the accused Alabama murderer and her attorney had plenty of reasons to take a plea deal, South Shore attorneys said. Bishop will spend the rest of her life in prison.

Braintree native Amy Bishop made a surprise guilty plea to capital murder on Tuesday afternoon in Huntsville, Ala. She’ll spend the rest of her life in prison, but will not face the death penalty for killing three people. She is unlikely to ever return to Massachusetts to face trial for killing her brother in 1986.

Braintree native Amy Bishop’s triple murder trial in Alabama was scheduled to begin Monday. A judge there has rescheduled it while her attorneys make another appeal for advance payments for expert witnesses to testify about her mental state. Bishop is charged with shooting to death three University of Alabama in Huntsville colleagues in February 2010.

Amy Bishop’s March 19 Alabama murder trial has been postponed. The Braintree native was scheduled to go on trial March 19 on three murder charges, but an Alabama judge has approved a delay that her defense attorneys requested.

Finances are threatening to delay the trial of a university professor charged with killing three colleagues – the second time in a year that money issues have gotten in the way of a high-profile Alabama murder case.

The Seth Bishop inquest has no surprises about Amy Bishop’s 1986 fatal shooting of her teenage brother. But it does provide vivid detail about the shooting -- and the role her mother Judith Bishop played as an eyewitness and later, when her daughter was arrested.

The mother and father of accused murderer Amy Bishop defended her at an inquest into the death of their son Seth conducted in 2010. No charges were filed after Seth Bishop’s death 25 years ago, but Bishop was charged with murder after the inquest.

Amy Bishop wants to keep the inquest report on her brother Seth Bishop’s 1986 shooting death closed for one simple reason: She says the report will prejudice her Alabama murder trial if it’s made public.

A former biology professor accused of killing three colleagues and wounding three others during a faculty meeting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity Thursday in the shootings.

The judge in the Amy Bishop murder case in Alabama has sealed the court file in the case, effectively closing the case to public scrutiny. The Braintree native and former University of Alabama biology professor is charged with going on a shooting spree in February 2010 that killed three of her colleagues and wounded three others.

Page 4 of 13 - Amy Bishop, who was charged in February with the University of Alabama-Huntsville shootings and in June with her brother’s 1986 killing in Braintree, won’t be charged in an attempted mail-bombing in Boston 17 years ago.

My June 23 column on the Amy Bishop case finally provoked spokespersons (both on the public payroll) for Bill Delahunt and Bill Keating to respond, albeit with mostly distracting insults about me rather than answers to tough questions

The biology professor charged with killing three Alabama university colleagues in a shooting rampage attempted suicide in jail early Friday, a source with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press.

A Norfolk County court judge has turned down a newspaper’s request to release the contents on an inquest examining how authorities’ handled the investigation into Amy Bishop’s fatal shooting of her brother Seth 24 years ago in Braintree.

The day after a grand jury indicted their daughter on charges of murdering their son, Sam and Judy Bishop released a statement condemning the indictment. "We know that what happened 23 years ago to our son, Seth, was an accident," the Bishops' statement reads. "Despite all the finger pointing among local police, state police, and the District Attorney’s Office, there is no evidence that Seth’s death was not an accident.”

Presented with evidence that had gathered dust for nearly 24 years, a Norfolk County grand jury indicted Amy Bishop on a first-degree murder charge in the 1986 shooting of her teenage brother in Braintree. “In Massachusetts we have evidence that there was a murder,” Norfolk District Attorney William Keating told reporters gathered at his office in Canton. Addressing the handling of the old investigation, Keating said, “Jobs were not done. Responsibilities were not met. Justice was not served.”

A Norfolk County grand jury has indicted Amy Bishop on a first-degree murder charge in the 1986 shooting of her teenage brother Seth in Braintree. Bishop will stand trial for murder unless she's convicted and sentenced to death in another shooting, an alleged rampage at the University of Alabama Huntsville that left three dead. Meanwhile, questions remain – at least for the public – over whether Braintree police and the district attorney’s office mishandled the old investigation. What do you think: Has justice been served by this 24-year-old indictment?

A grand jury has been convened in Dedham to hear evidence in the 1986 shooting death of the brother of a former university professor accused in Alabama of killing three colleagues. Retired Braintree police chief John Polio said he and his wife, who worked in an administrative position in the police department, have been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury.

An inquest report by Judge Mark Coven into the 1986 death of Seth Bishop in Braintree has been finalized and ordered impounded. The report was delivered on Tuesday to Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Joan Kenney, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Trial Court, said.

The Alabama neighborhood where Amy Bishop, her husband James Anderson and their children moved in 2003 is very different from the leafy street lined with Victorian-era homes near Braintree Square where Bishop grew up. Yet the communities are drawn together by a pair of tragedies.

Following a three-day inquest, a judge is preparing to decide whether Amy Bishop should have been arrested for shooting her 18-year-old brother to death on Dec. 6, 1986, in the family’s Braintree home.

A day at work turned into a face-to-face confrontation with a shotgun-wielding woman for Tom Pettigrew. At an inquest ongoing at Quincy District Court to investigate the 1986 shooting death of Seth Bishop of Braintree, Pettigrew described to a judge and Norfolk County officials how he became involved in the case when Seth’s sister Amy bumped into him and threatened him with a shotgun.

The gun used to kill three people during a faculty meeting at an Alabama university was bought for suspect Amy Bishop’s husband two decades ago when he said he was having problems with a neighbor, an investigator testified Tuesday.

Braintree native Amy Bishop, 45, appeared in a courtroom in Madison County in Alabama Tuesday morning for a brief hearing. A judge ruled there is probable cause to believe Bishop shot and killed three of her colleagues at the Univeristy of Alabama-Huntsville on Feb. 12 and wounded three others.

A Quincy judge has set aside four days in April for a judicial inquest to determine whether Amy Bishop murdered her brother in a 1986 Braintree shooting that investigators at the time ruled accidental. Bishop is now accused of killing three people and wounding three others during a Feb. 12 shooting rampage at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Page 7 of 13 - The Boston attorney who helped win millions for Big Dig collapse victim Milena Del Valle’s husband and children says there are too many barriers for wrongful death suits stemming from the Amy Bishop case in Braintree in 1986.

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt says the controversy over how his office handled the 1986 Amy Bishop case won’t play into his decision to run for re-election. And local political experts from both parties said they don’t believe the Quincy politician’s involvement in the case 20 years will prove politically damaging.

With his term expiring, U.S. Rep. William Delahunt is weighing his political future. But it was his distant past – an investigation nearly a quarter century ago – that had him standing before a pack of reporters and photographers in his congressional office.

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, the former district attorney whose office investigated the fatal 1986 shooting of Seth Bishop by his sister Amy, said Monday he does not feel his office “bears any responsibility” for Bishop being freed without charges. With video and audio.

Neighbor Debbie Kosarick feels Amy Bishop’s fatal shooting of 18-year-old Seth in 1986 was an accident. She doesn’t feel the same way about what happened Feb. 12 at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, where Amy Bishop is charged with shooting six of her colleagues on the school’s faculty, killing three.

Could biology professor Amy Bishop have been so enraged that she doesn’t remember killing three colleagues and wounding three others during a shooting rampage at an Alabama university? It’s possible, but not likely, according to local experts.

On Dec. 6, Seth Bishop was going Christmas shopping with his mother Judy, his father Sam and his sister Amy. He was carrying in groceries before the trip when a gun went off, killing him. His family reflected on the tragedy in this 18986 interview with the Braintree Forum.

Patriot Ledger columnist Wendy Murphy, a leading victims rights advocate and nationally recognized television legal analyst, recently made her arguments in a Daily Beast column for pursuing a murder charge against Amy Bishop for the 1986 shot-gun slaying of her brother.

The 1986 saga involving Amy Bishop this week revealed bubbling frustration in the Braintree Police Department over the handling of the case. Remarks by Police Chief Paul Frazier left a host of officials – from retired Chief John V. Polio to U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, the former Norfolk County district attorney – blindsided and unprepared for the scrutiny that has followed.

The former Braintree police chief under scrutiny for how his department handled the 1986 fatal shooting by Amy Bishop said that officers were busy with two other high-profile cases at the same time which hampered the Bishop investigation.

Mayor Joseph Sullivan issued the following statement Friday, related to the controversy surrounding Amy Bishop. Bishop allegedly shot and killed three people in Alabama last week, over 23 years after she shot and killed her brother Seth inside their Hollis Avenue home. That 1986 Braintree shooting – and how law enforcement authorities handled it at the time – has been subject of intense interest of late.

On Dec. 17, 1984, the Patriot Ledger ran an extensive profile on then Braintree Chief of Police John Polio. Polio led the department through tumultuous times, including numerous murder investigations, the arrest of several members of his department, the firebombing of his own police cruiser and then the 1986 fatal shooting of Seth Bishop by his sister, Amy, two years after this story ran.

A biology department chairman gunned down at a faculty meeting was remembered Thursday as a father figure who cared deeply about his students, the kind of professor who kept his office door open in case they needed to talk about personal problems. Mourners hugged and cried Thursday at a memorial service for Gopi K. Podila, 52, slain last week at the University of Alabama in Huntsville along with two colleagues.

When a veteran Braintree police captain sought town meeting approval in 1986 to stall his mandatory retirement, Judith Bishop was among the town meeting members to support him. A Patriot Ledger article published on May 14, 1986, quoted Bishop voicing her support for Capt. Charles Solimini at the spring town meeting vote.

Dan Shaw can’t drive past the time capsule in front of town hall without thinking about his friend Seth Bishop. Inside the time capsule is a drawing Bishop did when he was a student at the Hollis Elementary School. The capsule is scheduled to be opened in 2076, the nation’s 300th birthday. Shaw recalls telling Bishop, “We’ll all be long gone, and your art will still be in the time capsule.” Bishop has been gone for more than 23 years now, shot by his sister Amy in the kitchen of the family’s Hollis Avenue home on Dec. 6, 1986. Authorities ruled the shooting accidental.

Students banded together to let administrators know something wasn’t quite right about Professor Amy Bishop. She taught by reading straight out of the textbook, never made eye contact and liked to remind people constantly that she went to Harvard.

The Norfolk County district attorney says the statute of limitations has expired on several charges that could have been bought against Amy Bishop for shooting her brother and pointing a shotgun at two men in 1986.

Amy Bishop walked up to a car dealer’s body shop with a loaded shotgun and a demand: the keys to a getaway car, right away. According to newly released police reports, Bishop ran from her Hollis Avenue home after shooting her brother in December 1986 with one shell in the gun’s chamber and another in her pocket.

Joseph Ng, an associate professor who worked with Amy Bishop in the biology department at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was in the cramped faculty conference room when gunfire erupted Friday afternoon during a monthly meeting.

Page 11 of 13 - Minutes before her younger brother was pronounced dead, Amy Bishop sat in a Braintree police station booking room and – after being read her rights – started talking. The 20-year-old woman told Lt. James R. Sullivan there had been a family “spat.” Afterward, she decided to practice loading her father’s shotgun in case of “robbers.” Bishop described accidentally shooting her 18-year-old brother, Seth, in the chest and denied it had been intentional.

The former Braintree police chief and the former top prosecutor in the Norfolk District attorney’s office differ on who should have brought charges against Amy Bishop for fleeing the scene with a shotgun after shooting her brother.

It’s too late for criminal charges against Amy Bishop for the 1986 shooting of her brother, Seth, and the aftermath of the incident, the Norfolk District Attorney’s office said last night. The conclusion was reached after a review of original police reports of the incident, which had been thought to be missing.

A professor who survived a deadly university shooting rampage said the colleague charged in the attack methodically shot her victims in the head until the gun apparently jammed and she was pushed out of the room. Associate professor Joseph Ng told The Associated Press on Tuesday he was one of 12 people at a biology department meeting Friday at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. He described the details in an e-mail to a colleague at the University of California-Irvine.

There are new questions about the former Massachusetts woman who is at the center of a campus killing spree in Alabama. Amy Bishop shot and killed her brother in the Bay State more than 20 years ago in a shooting that was ruled accidental. During the weekend, the former police chief in Braintree dismissed any allegations that the Bishop case was mishandled in 1986. Now, he appears to be changing his tune.

Amy Bishop gave only glimpses of a violent past and flashes of triple murder charges lying in her future, said a longtime friend who met Bishop in local writer’s group 11 years ago. “The Amy I knew was impulsive, very sweet, very funny and very helpful,” said Hamilton resident Rob Dinsmoor, a freelance science writer and editor. “I’m also learning a lot more about her. Things she never disclosed.”

A Quincy man said Amy Bishop tried to steal a car at gunpoint from a Braintree auto body shop minutes after her brother Seth was shot in 1986. Thomas Pettigrew told WCVB-TV Channel 5 Monday he and a co-worker were confronted by Bishop. Pettigrew said Bishop held a shotgun to his chest. “She was like, ‘Hands up’ So, of course, right away, we both put our hands up and she was like, ‘I need a car,’” Pettigrew told WCVB-TV.

In a high school class of nearly 600 students, Amy Bishop didn’t really stand out. At Braintree High School, Amy Bishop was known for her intelligence and playing the violin. Now she is charged with capital murder and attempted murder for shooting six colleagues at the University of Alabama-Huntsville on Friday. Three of her fellow professors were killed.

Amy Bishop kept quiet about a violent episode in her past around colleagues and students at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. But there was one personal issue she didn’t mind loudly complaining about: being denied tenure.

Late Saturday afternoon, Polio and his family were suddenly besieged by the media, who had raced from a press conference called by Police Chief Paul Frazier. Chief Frazier said Amy Bishop, charged with the shooting deaths of three professors at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Ala., had been involved in the shooting death of her brother, Seth, in 1986 in Braintree. Files on the Bishop case were missing from the Braintree files, Chief Frazier said, who added that some police officers were extremely upset when the death was ruled accidental in 1986.

Amy Bishop was recognized as very bright from an early age, and although shy, she gave no signs of being troubled or capable of violence. Town Councilor Charles Kokoros, who went to school with Bishop from kindergarten on, remembers a girl who was “extremely bright.”

Files found late Saturday have answered some questions about why Amy Bishop, charged in the shooting deaths of three professors at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Ala., was investigated and let go after the 1986 shooting death of her 18-year-old brother at their Braintree home.